Invoice-to-pay automation and overpayments reduction

Project overview and objectives

When a packaging supplies company engaged our team, their current source-to-pay state was holding them back. With labor-intensive workflows, they didn’t have the time to think long-term; they were solely focused on the daily tasks that stacked up. To help set the scene, they were:

• Processing over 30K invoices per month with paper and manual processes
• Seeing significant inaccuracies, inefficiencies, control gaps, and lost costs
• Suffering from disconnected legacy systems without common processes—meaning they were overspending, their stakeholders were dissatisfied, and their workflows were highly ineffective

What we did

We started by looking at where they were and where they wanted to be. Every team is a little different, so we align stakeholders and teams across a common goal—with quick wins along the way to motivate and demonstrate clear value. After mapping the end-to-end processes, we:

• Evaluated key policies and controls and analyzed key performance metrics including master data and spend
• Identified four main areas of overspend risk: invalid invoices, duplicate invoices, duplicate liabilities, and invalid liabilities
• Designed an approach to identify and address prior issues and minimize future issues—all while balancing efficiency and control

Impact

We helped them realize sustainable and automated source-to-pay processes and technology improvements, including:

• Automation of over 30k invoices per month and implementation of electronic scanning of Bills of Lading
• Identification and recovery of over $5M in overpayments and application of over $15M in aged credits
• Reduction of vendor master by more than 50%, streamlining reporting and negotiations
• Optimization of payment terms and simplification of 89 possible payment terms down to 6, resulting in better weighted terms and an improved process

Are you curious how you can uncover similar benefits and reduce your overpayments? Let’s talk.